So we're going to start with a little story time today. I can remember the very first time that I ran the Western States, 100 mile endurance run, and it's considered somewhat of a, the Superbowl of 100 mile races. You actually have to complete other 100 K or 62 mile races or 100 mile races just to qualify to then enter a lottery to run this particular 100 mile race.
And there've been people that have been in the lottery for years with your chances of increasing getting a little bit better each year, but you still have to run a qualifying, And I was fortunate enough to make it through that entire lottery process not once but twice, Actually, not once or twice but three times and I ran the race and completed it on three different occasions, But there is a section of downhill from around mile 94 to 96 down to this place called no hands bridge.
That it truly is some of the most incredible and wonderful excruciatingly painfully awesome pain that I think one will ever feel in their lifetime. Now I have not given birth and I can't even imagine what that experience must be like and I'm guessing that someone would take this particular stretch of downhill even though it feels like your quads are being stabbed with these ice picks over delivering a human being
out of your body probably any day of the week. But for me I have never carried so many emotions at one time, from pain and joy and euphoria and exhaustion and pride and determination and hope and fear and exhilaration, and I think that I could keep going. But in that moment, what I remember clearly, and I've thought about about this so often was having a lack of was suffering.
So fast forward a few years and I ran around this quarter mile track for 24 hours for six straight years to raise money for schools And I remember trading messages with somebody who had done something similar the year before at his kids school, And he had shared that at one point he asked for the track to be cleared for a few hours in the wee Hours of the morning as he was really entering this pain cave He said where the pain just met up with this suffering and to me
That was the part of the event that scared me the most was that sounded pretty miserable, But then through those early morning hours on each of the 6 different years of the 24 hour runs, I found myself insisting on having the track open and that there were many, many people, friends and others that just stopped by and came and ran a few laps or a few miles or spent a few hours around the track with me to help me pass the time and help me ignore
the pain and definitely avoid any semblance of suffering. So why is it that we can experience pain on some occasions and we can avoid suffering But where in other situations, suffering seems to accompany the pain, almost like chocolate can accompany peanut butter or death and taxes naturally accompany life. So today we're going to explore the Buddhist proverb of pain being inevitable, but suffering being optional. And how do you make sense of that and how do you actually avoid suffering?
And where are you personally on that journey of becoming more aware of what you do with both mental and emotional, and we could even tie that into physical pain, where it can feel like that is all that you're experiencing in your life. So we're gonna talk about that and so much more coming up on today's episode of The Virtual Couch. Music. Hey everybody, welcome to episode 373 of The Virtual Couch. I am your host, Tony Overbay.
I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified Mindful Habit Coach, creator of The Path Back, an online recovery program, pornography recovery program that is helping people reclaim their lives, from turning to pornography as an unhealthy coping mechanism and I can't say enough about The Path Back program. Go to pathback.com and there you can find a short ebook that talks about five mistakes that people make when trying to put pornography in their rear view mirror once and for all.
But I would highly encourage you to join the Path Back. It's an online program and then the gold is the weekly call and it's the thing that I look forward to each and every week and it is done via Zoom and it is a wonderful group of people that we are talking about. It's almost as if we're saying, okay, oh yeah, that's right.
We're here to talk about stopping, turning to pornography as an unhealthy coping mechanism, but really we're talking about addressing these five voids that I like to talk about in life where if somebody doesn't feel as connected in their relationship, in their parenting, in their faith, their health, their career, then that siren song of turning to any unhealthy coping mechanism can just scream. So we're talking about what to do to fill in those voids in life.
And then, oh yeah, we can also talk about the latest evidence-based models, modalities, and getting rid of the shame that accompanies somebody when they turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms like pornography. But that is not what we're here to talk about today. We are gonna get on to this. This pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. And by the time you listen to the virtual couch, this episode, whenever it is, Murder on the Couch should be out.
Episode one should be out. So look in the show notes or go find it and please follow it and subscribe it and rate it and like it. If you do, I'm only asking for that if you genuinely enjoy the podcast because there will be plenty more of those episodes to come. That's with my daughter, Sydney. And if you wanna watch us, And then Sydney has done an incredible job producing the episode that has a lot of sounds
and graphics and video and that sort of thing. And that's over on the Virtual Couch YouTube channel. So that will be in the show notes as well. Or you can just Google, I'm sure, Murder on the Couch, Tony or Sydney, YouTube, and you will find that. And I would love to hear what you have to say about that. But let's get to today's topic. I'm going to go a couple of different directions today.
I'm going to pull from one of my favorite books, which is The Buddha Brain, this neuroscience of Happiness by Rick Hansen, but I'm going to start with a Psychology Today article that I've had as one of my hundreds of tabs open for quite some time because I really wanted to dive into this topic because once you're aware of the difference between pain and suffering, I think that it can really be helpful because it's going to be one of those things where
maybe you didn't know what you didn't know about what was happening in your own body or in your own life. So we're going to talk about an article called Pain is Unavoidable, Suffering is an Option. Pain and suffering are not one in the same. And this is from Jade Wu, a PhD, also known as the Savvy Psychologist. And Jade has a podcast as well that goes by that same name, the Savvy Psychologist Podcast. And Jade also specializes in helping people with sleep problems as well as anxiety disorders.
So I would actually like to reach out to Jade. And I've always wanted to have somebody really come on and talk about sleep problems and sleep issues. And I've got all kinds of questions about that. So Jade, if you end up hearing mention of me using this article as the muse for today, then I would love to have you on the podcast.
But she starts out by saying it's funny, she said when she thinks about the most painful experiences in life, both physical and emotional, she said I noticed the amount of hurt I felt at the time is not proportional to how much I shudder when I look back on those moments. I mentioned childbirth in the opening, she said for example nothing causes much pure mind-numbing pain than giving birth, yet even at the toughest moments, she said I felt pride
and excitement, but she said when I get a mosquito bite I can complain and moan for days. Suffering galore. So judged by the level of pain alone, giving birth would be considered a million times worse than a mosquito bite, so what governs the amount of suffering we experience? So I love that example because pain, again this pain is unavoidable.
Pain is going to happen in childbirth or pain is going to happen when one runs 100 miles and then is going on a 2 mile downhill at miles 94 to 96 when your quads are already shot beyond recognition. But she says, spoiler alert, the secret ingredient behind how much we suffer from painful experiences, lies in the way that we think about pain. So let's dig in a little bit deeper there. So defining pain, she says, is simple.
It's an unpleasant physical sensation, whether it's mild, like an itchy elbow, or extreme, like a broken bone, or somewhat in between. And it can also be an unpleasant raw emotional experience. Raw emotion is an automatic and simple feeling, one that a first grader could name.
Things like anger, sadness, fear, joy. I almost think of the wheel of emotions or those pictures that show the happy faces, everything from happy to sad and angry, and you show a kid, hey, how are you feeling, point to one of these, or let's identify your feelings this feeling wheel. But in that scenario, she said that pain then is something that we have all felt and we will all continue to feel, we'll feel it over and over again. It's universal and pain is unavoidable.
And as a matter of fact, one of those concepts from acceptance and commitment therapy that I've been talking about more is that if you are unwilling to have it, then you will. In essence, what kind of a life are you going to live? If you are completely unwilling to have any pain, physical or emotional, then there is a very good chance that you're going to do everything you can to avoid all things painful and that is not going to be living this fulfilling value-based sense of purpose life.
So you may be able to somewhat avoid the emotional or physical pain, but then will you enjoy life or will you find much satisfaction or a point in moving forward on a day-to-day basis? So she talks about how nobody can really say that they've led a completely painless existence.
Even people with the rare genetic condition of congenital insensitivity to pain can feel, unpleasant emotion, and of course I couldn't help myself, but I went and looked up what, congenital insensitivity to pain is, and, just from an ADD gee whiz fun fact, congenital insensitivity to pain is a condition that inhibits the ability to perceive physical pain. So from birth, affected individuals never feel pain in any part of their body when injured.
People with this condition can feel the differences between sharp and dull, and hot and cold, but they can't sense, for example, that a hot beverage is burning their tongue. So this lack of pain awareness often leads to an accumulation of wounds, bruises, broken bones, and other health issues that may go undetected. And the young children with congenital insensitivity to pain may have mouth or finger wounds due to repeated self-biting.
And they might also experience multiple pain or burn-related injuries, and they can lead to a reduced life expectancy. But that is just an absolute trip, and it's considered this form of peripheral neuropathy because it affects the peripheral nervous systems. What does that have to do with today's episode? Very little, if anything. But Jade Wu just mentioned that even people with that rare genetic condition, they can still feel unpleasant emotions.
So there's no way to avoid just feeling these unpleasant emotions. And for 99 point whatever percent of us, we're also gonna feel a fair amount of pain. I might even say a tremendous amount of pain throughout our life. But she goes on to talk about pain being useful. The reason we're gonna feel that and that pain can be useful that's because pain's important to us as human beings because physical pain, the goal there is it's there to help us avoid harmful things.
So that's why you don't have to mull over the idea of pulling your hand back from a hot stove. The pain makes your body recoil quickly and it also tells us to slow down when we push ourselves too hard. So even pain in exercise is there in essence to tell us that, hey, you're overdoing it. So I admittedly, that was me ignoring the pain signals that are saying, hey, have you gone far enough? Really, do we have to hit the 100? How about 94, 95, 96? What does it really matter?
And it also slows down, it tells us to slow down when we push ourselves too hard, not just with physical or with exercise, but it could be with emotional things as well. But when your legs hurt from running, or she talks about biking for miles, then in theory one should take breaks before you put too much stress and then you can cause an injury, which absolutely happens quite a bit actually in the sport of ultra running that I have enjoyed.
Emotional pain, she says, is similarly helpful. It may seem counterintuitive, but sadness is actually vital to our well-being. As if, for example, we didn't care about things like pets or loved ones, then we wouldn't be as sad if they passed away and sadness signals to those around us that we need to be consoled and supported. And in other areas of our life, it gives us this foundation for empathy.
And so sadness, if we can then check in with our body and notice that we are feeling sad, and then we can see, okay, what am I feeling sad about? Then that does give you a chance to look inward, introspective, or to learn why is this uncomfortable for me? Or why is someone else feeling a certain way and I'm not, then I have this chance to self-reflect or just have a little bit of why is this bringing up discomfort?
Because then I can take a look and see if there's anything in my life that this is warning me about or that I need to perhaps take a look at or change. But in summary then, pain is necessary, it's unavoidable, it is clean, it's simple, even if it's unpleasant, and then it's also a raw experience that isn't over-processed by thoughts. Pain is just happening. That's why we like to say that pain is inevitable. But now let's get into the concept of suffering. So unlike pain, suffering is messy.
She said, I like to think of it as something that we wrap around pain like layers of gift wrap. You can pile it on and it makes the original piece seem much bigger and more complicated, but is it necessary? Here's what suffering looks like in action. People saying things like, why is this arthritis happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? Or I always have the very worst luck. I can't believe my flight was canceled,
or I hate this cramping so much, when will it ever end? Or these migraines are never gonna go away, I can't take it, what's wrong with me? Or how come I ended up with the flu, but my partner didn't, that isn't fair, but that's always the way things work. Or I am young and healthy, I should not have back pain or neck pain. And she said, you may notice that all these examples are thoughts, things that you may say to yourself. And we all talk to ourself, we all have an inner running monologue.
Our brains do use words to describe and understand the world including our own experiences in it. So she said, you may also notice that these thoughts don't accompany the pain. When I say accept, I'm not describing giving up. Accepting means acknowledging that the pain is there and simply allowing it to be. As I talked about a few weeks ago, acceptance in the world of acceptance and commitment therapy is based off of the Latin word, I think it's capire, which means to take in.
So we're taking in the pain in its entirety without judgment. And she said, what's so important is that this is what really starts to set pain and suffering apart. That pain simply is. Suffering cannot sit still. So again, pain just is. But. Suffering cannot sit still. Suffering wrestles with the pain. Suffering is trying to get rid of the pain, make sense of the pain, deny the pain, bargain with the pain, judge the pain, blame it on someone else, project that pain into the
future, or regret why it's here from the past. So by doing all of this, suffering and now becomes the center of your experience. But if I can accept the fact that I am feeling pain, so if I go back to that mile 94, and I am accepting that I have a lot of pain, that every step down the hill feels like these, again, the words used at the time a lot were ice picks in my quads and in my thighs, then that is exactly what they were.
And then each and every, not literally, but figuratively, but each and every step, there's the pain, there's the pain. But with accepting that, oh, I'm gonna feel the pain, I also felt the euphoria. I felt the joy. I was there with my pacer that happened to be my wife who had picked me up the last 20 miles of the race and it was starting to be a new day, sunrise. And so this was just a feeling of so many emotions.
Now, had I wanted to avoid pain, I wouldn't have been there to begin with, but that is one of those experiences that I can think about now. And it brings up all the emotions, all the wonderful, amazing emotions and connection that I had with my wife in nature and my body and God and the universe and everything in that moment, because I was not gonna try to avoid pain or avoid these experiences, but gonna accept the fact that that pain is gonna come.
So, when she talks about that again, that if, I want to read that part again, because this is why I love this article so much, that she talks about again, you may also notice that thoughts don't accept the pain, that these thoughts don't accept the pain, the inner monologue that we have. So, she said, when I say accept, I'm not describing giving up, accepting means acknowledging that the pain is there and allowing it to be.
So, this is what really sets pain and suffering apart. Pain simply is, but suffering cannot sit still. Suffering wrestles with the pain, trying to deny it, bargain with it, judge it, blame it on someone, project it into the future, regret it from the past. And by doing all of this, suffering becomes the center of your experience. Now we're into the, woe is me, why me? Instead of the, it is, I feel, that is happening.
So she said an important note, none of the thoughts of suffering actually diminish the pain. Just because you keep telling yourself that you shouldn't be feeling this bad doesn't mean that you'll feel better.
As a matter of fact, she says that the should, which I love saying that no one likes to be should on, especially when we should on ourselves, but should tends to make you feel worse because now you've added layers of frustration and confusion and indignation, and they're all unnecessary layers of gift wrap to the original piece of pain. So these complications apply to emotional pain and suffering too.
She asks, do any of these sound familiar? My stupid anxiety makes me so miserable, what's wrong with me? Or what if I never get over this breakup? I can't even handle this. Or I shouldn't be feeling so low. other people have it even worse. So when you judge an emotion like fear, or what's wrong with me, what could be simple anxiety now is anxiety plus shame.
That when you judge sadness as a weakness into the future, now you're forced to carry your potential heartbreak plus all of its imaginary friends into the pit of your stomach. So no wonder suffering can feel so much heavier than pain. Let me turn to one of my favorite books, The Neuroscience of Happiness, The Buddha's Brain by Rick Hansen.
So I want to talk about the first and the second dart because we're going to get to this concept that I have created my own intellectual property, my own IP with going from we don't know what we don't know to then we know what we don't do to eventually we do more than we don't and then we become. But I took that from the book The Buddha's Brain and I want to give the origin story of that oversimplification. So, we start out by Rick Hansen talking about the first and second dart.
This is in chapter three of Buddha's Brain. And there's a quote there by Yonghee Mignur Rinpoche, which I probably butchered all three of those names. The quote says, ultimately happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort, of being aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.
Rick Hansen says, some physical discomfort is unavoidable. It's a crucial signal to take action to protect life and limb, like the pain that makes you pull back your hand from a hot stove. I love talking about that. What I think is kind of funny is the person that is editing this, and I hope she'll leave it in, my daughter Alex, I am thinking immediately of Alex touching a hot pan when she was young and us running to the doctor and her learning that, literally learning that lesson.
But some mental discomfort, again, is inevitable. For example, as we evolved, growing emotional investments in children and other members of the band, and to put things in perspective in the book, Buddha Brain, he is talking about we have this need to belong to a band or a tribe that as we started to have these emotional investments in our children and other members of the band, that's what motivated our ancestors to keep those carriers of their genes alive.
And understandably, then, we feel distress when dear ones, close ones, loved ones are threatened, and sorrow when they are harmed. We also evolved to care greatly about our place in the band or in the tribe, in the group, and in the hearts of others, so it's normal to feel hurt if you're rejected or scorned. Rick Hansen then says, here we go, he says, to borrow an expression from the Buddha, inescapable physical or mental discomfort is the first dart of existence.
So I want to talk about these first dart and second darts. So let me repeat that inescapable physical or mental discomfort is the first dart of existence. As long as you live and love, some of those darts will come your way. So you are going to get hit by these first darts, which is this pain. So we are going to experience those, those, that pain is going to come, but, Then, and this is such a good concept, first darts are unpleasant to be sure, but then he says we add our reactions to them.
These reactions are second darts, the ones that we throw ourselves. Most of our suffering comes from second darts. So he says, suppose that you're walking through a dark room at night and you stub your toe on a chair. So that would be the first dart. The dart that is thrown is the one that is the pain that comes from stubbing your toe. So he says, right after the first dart of pain comes the second dart of
anger. Who moved that chair? Or maybe a loved one is so cold to you when you're hoping for some caring in addition to the natural drop in the pit of your stomach, which is the first dart. So if someone, if you are going through something and somebody doesn't care, that first drop or the the pit in your stomach of, man, I'd feel like this person doesn't care, would be the first dart. It's just a feeling that you have. Then he says, then you might
feel unwanted. That's the second dart as a result of having been ignored as a child. So second darts often trigger, and this is why I like the first dart, second dart, because we've got the pain and we've talked a little bit about the suffering from the Psychology Today article, but now we're going to talk about that we can continue to throw these second darts over and over again.
So he said you might feel unwanted, the second dart, as a result of having been ignored as a child, but then those second darts often trigger more second darts through these associative neural networks. You might start to feel now guilt about your anger that somebody moved the chair, or sadness that you feel hurt yet again by somebody you love. In relationships, these second darts are the things that start to create these vicious cycles.
So your second dart reactions can often then trigger reactions from your partner, which, then set off more second darts from you and so on, and all of a sudden you're in a dart fight. And at that point, now I've made, I have felt sad, I felt scorned, I have felt rejected, but now I throw the second dart of, it's because this person doesn't care. And now I might even express that this person, you don't care about me because I want to be heard. I want to be seen. I
want to get rid of this discomfort. I want the other person to make me feel better. But all, of a sudden they just got hit by a dart and now they feel bad. And now they're saying, okay, no, that you don't understand, and now we're throwing second darts back and forth. So, he said, remarkably, most of our second dart reactions occur when there is in fact no first dart anywhere to be found.
When there's no pain inherent in the conditions that we're reacting to, we all of a sudden add suffering to them. He says, for example, sometimes he'll come home from work and he says the house will be a mess and the kids' stuff will be all over, and he said that's the condition. Is there even a first dart in the coats and the shoes on the sofa or in the clutter covering the counter? He said, there really isn't.
No one dropped a brick on him or hurt his children. Now, so does he have to get upset? Not really. He said, I could ignore the stuff. I could actually pick it up calmly, or I could talk with him about it. And he said, sometimes I managed to handle it that way. But if I don't, then the second dart start landing tipped with, he calls them the three poisons greed. Greed then makes him rigid about how he wants things to be hatred. That's the second poison that's on the dart.
Hatred gets him all bothered and angry. And then delusion, this third poison tricks him into taking the situation personally that now all of a sudden nobody cares about me because they didn't clean the house. So again, there was no brick dropped on his toe, there is no first dart, but he's created all these second dart responses based off of greed, hatred, and delusion. And he said saddest of all, some
second dart reactions are to conditions that are actually positive. If somebody pays you a compliment he said that's actually a positive situation, but then you might start thinking with nervousness or even a little bit of shame, but I'm really not that good of a person. So when they find out that that I'm a fraud, and then what are they gonna think?
Right there, a needless second dart, suffering begins. Somebody actually said something nice, and all of a sudden I'm throwing these darts at myself because I'm thinking, okay, that person had to say that, or what happens when they find out that I'm not really the person who they think that I am? It can start to lead to more of this pain, more of this suffering.
Now, I highly recommend the Buddha's brain because from here, he does go in, Rick Hansen goes into talking more about suffering isn't this abstract, or it's not just necessarily conceptual. He says it is embodied, you feel it in your body and it proceeds through bodily mechanisms and part of the amazing thing about that book, The Buddha's Brain, is he goes into the literal neuroscience then of what's happening in the brain.
It can be a lot, it can be overwhelming and so what I love about it is you can talk about a concept like we just did, first and second dart reactions but then if you want to, he talks about understanding the physical machinery of suffering might help you see it increasingly as an impersonal condition, that it's absolutely unpleasant.
But it's not worth getting unpleasant about because that just brings more second darts and then he gets in talking about suffering, cascades through your body through the sympathetic nervous system, and then the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access of the endocrine hormonal system. If you love the neuroscience or the way that the brain works, I highly recommend going and checking that out because he really does lay it out so well.
But where he goes next, and one of the things that I appreciate is then where did I come up with this? We know what we don't know, and we learn and we become. Now that we have that concept of the first and second darts, he says this becomes a path of practice. So he says as the saying goes, and this is what we're talking about today, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.
So he said if you can simply stay present with whatever is arising in awareness, whether it's the first dart, so whether it really is the immediate physical pain or the emotional pain of feeling snubbed or lost, you know, that initial gut visceral reaction, if you can be present with that, He said, whether it's this first start or second one, without reacting further, then you will start breaking the chain of suffering right there.
And over time, through training and shaping your mind and brain, you can even start to change what arises, increasing what's positive and decreasing what's negative. He says, in the meantime, you can rest in and be nourished by a growing sense of peace and clarity in your true nature. And that is this concept of you really did not know what you didn't know.
And even if you're listening to this podcast and you've made it this far, then you are starting to learn more about things you didn't know about. But that, of course, doesn't mean that you're gonna now have everything down and you're never gonna react again and you're gonna be very present and mindful and you're gonna recognize that I'm not broken, I'm human, and I have all the thoughts and feelings I do because I do.
And you're gonna start having this come into conscious, but it's gonna take time. And inevitably, we're gonna go back to the default way that the brain works, the path of least resistance, these deeply rutted neuropathways, but a path of practice.
Again, that's what Rick Hansen's talking about in the Buddha brain, is he says these three processes, being with whatever arises, then working with the tendencies of the mind to transform them, and then taking refuge in the ground of being are essential practices on this path of awakening.
So what that means is like being with whatever arises. If I'm noticing that I'm getting angry, I can sit with that, I can sit with anger, and then I can work with the tendencies that my mind typically works with to transform them. If I'm angry, my brain wants to immediately go right to the what's wrong with me, instead of noticing, oh, nothing, I'm just angry. I'm noticing that I'm angry. It's a feeling, and it's an emotion, and it's something that I am experiencing right now.
And then he says, take refuge in the ground of just being. Oh, I am being angry. Check that out. That is happening. It absolutely is. So he says, in many ways, these correspond respectively to mindfulness, virtue, and wisdom, and to the three fundamental neural functions of learning, regulating, and selecting. Learning, so all of a sudden I'm learning, oh, that is a feeling.
Regulating, I'm sitting with it, I'm noticing it. It's a feeling, I have lots of them, why am I making such a big deal about this particular feeling? And then selecting, now what do I do from here? Now that I've noticed this is a feeling, and indeed it is, and I'm not trying to push it away, I'm not shooting on myself, and it is happening, now I can select, I can invite this feeling come along with me while I take action on something that actually matters to me.
So he says, as you deal with these different issues on your path of awakening, you'll repeatedly encounter these stages of growth and you'll hear the stage one, stage two, stage three, stage four, the parts where I talk about, you didn't know what you didn't know, you know, but you don't do as much.
All of a sudden you're doing more than you don't and you become. He lays it out so much better. He says, stage one, you are caught in a second dart reaction. Now we understand what that second dart is that you are now you are throwing this dart at yourself. You've experienced the first dart, there's some pain somewhere, but you're caught in a second dart reaction, you don't even realize it.
So he gives the example, if your partner forgets to bring milk home and you complain angrily without seeing that your reaction is over the top, I cannot believe that you don't bring milk, you forgot to bring milk, I asked you to bring milk, you never write things down, you obviously don't care about me, it's easy for me, I write things down, why don't you write things down? I must not matter to you. Second dart, second dart, second dart.
That moves on to stage two. You realize you've been hijacked by greed or hatred in the broadest sense, but you feel like you just can't help yourself. Internally, you're squirming, but you can't stop grumbling bitterly about the milk. So now all of a sudden you realize, okay, I am losing my mind. I get it, it's milk, but I can't stop myself. I just get so angry. And that's the part of now you know, but you're still not necessarily doing. And that can be so frustrating.
But eventually you get onto stage three. Some aspect of the reaction arises, but you don't act it out. You feel irritated, but you remind yourself that your partner does a lot for you already, getting cranky will just make things worse. So now you're noticing the reaction, you're not saying anything about it, and you're making room for the reaction or the feeling, but you're okay, it's milk. Stage four, your reaction doesn't even come up. Sometimes you forget you ever even had the issue.
You understand there's no milk, and you calmly figure out what to do now with your partner. They forgot the milk. Hey, did you bring the milk home? And they said, man, no, I forgot, I am so sorry. And you say, okay, do you wanna go together, or I can get it, or I can just use something else in the recipe. And you don't even start to get up into your fight or flight response at all. So he says, in education, these are known succinctly as unconscious incompetence.
So you don't know what you don't know. Conscious incompetence, now I'm aware, but I'm still not doing. Conscious competence, now I'm aware, I'm actually starting to take action or do things. And then unconscious competence, I'm not even aware that it's a thing, I'm just being and doing. And he said, they're useful labels for knowing where you are with a given issue. And this is why I appreciate this so much is that he says, the second stage is the hardest one, and often where you wanna quit.
That is that one where stage two, you realize you've been hijacked by greed or hatred in the broadest sense, but you cannot help yourself. Internally, you're squirming, you can't start grumbling bitterly about the milk.
Or in other words, when he goes back to this conscious incompetence, now I'm aware, I'm conscious of the fact that I am incompetent in this moment and I cannot get my crap together and I'm saying and I'm being and I'm doing and I'm just throwing these second darts and now I'm putting this on to my partner and I've been hijacked by greed or hatred and that can be a really tough place to be. So again, he says that second stage is the hardest one, and often where we want to quit.
So it's important to keep aiming for the third and fourth stages, just keep at it and you absolutely will get there. This is where he starts talking about the concepts around implicit memory or what it feels like to be you is based on the slow residue of lived experience. Thank goodness now you know, even if you're not doing, because eventually you're gonna do more than you don't and you are going to become.
He said it takes effort and time to clear out these old structures and to build new ones. Said he calls this the law of little things. And although little moments of greed, hatred, delusion have left residue of suffering in your mind and brain, a, lot of little moments of practice will replace what he talked about earlier, these three poisons and the suffering they cause with happiness, love, and.
Wisdom. Okay, so now that you know what you didn't know and you are aware that it still might be a little bit frustrating right now that you're not always doing the things that you've learned, I want to stay in the book The Buddha's brain and I want to talk about the way that Rick Hansen talks about
taking in the good. And a very quick story, I spoke at this youth conference a couple of weeks ago and I was speaking at a building that I used to work out of when I was a brand new therapist and I would work four days a week out of their main office, the place that I was working for my church at the time, and I would then I would work one day a week, I jokingly said, up the hill for the hill people, but that is not meant to talk negative about the people that lived up the hill in.
The Sierra Nevada mountain range. But they would come down once a week, they, all the people would gather around for counseling and the line would be out the door. No, but it was more convenient for some people. But there was an experience where there was one client that I had not met with in that building, in the building that I worked out of one day a week, and it was basically a very large church building, and they had always seen
me in the office that I operated from in more around the Sacramento area. So, I'm in a session with one of these Hill people and we're having a very, I'm sure, tender moment, therapeutic moment and this client of mine that has never had to meet with me in this church building, but they've always met with me in a regular office, they didn't know what they didn't know and they did not realize that I did not just decide to meet them there and only them
there for this appointment and so I'm in a session with someone and then this other client goes and they just throw open the door and they go boo And we all were surprised, and I think I joked when I was speaking at this youth conference that I could have diagnosed all three of us with PTSD at that moment. But my point being that when I used to go to that building, before I ever started working there as a counselor, I had had some really fun moments there.
They had a big basketball court, there had been other youth conferences, there had been some spiritual things that I had experienced or been a part of there.
But now, whenever I go back to that building, this was the building I was speaking at a a couple of weeks ago, I said that I have this relational frame that in my frame of memory I now have this relationship with this funny now but very not so funny in the moment PTSD-like experience where one client just throws open the door of the therapist's office, which no one does, and then scares me, my client, and then scares themselves.
So I was talking about this concept of a relational frame, and so then I was telling the youth, I worked, I think I spoke to a few hundred and it was over four one-hour workshops. And I just said, so I would tell that story. And then I said, so here's what I think is important about that story, is that we typically default toward negative experiences or negative memories. It's a survival instinct or a survival mechanism.
But we can also create, intentionally create these positive relational frames. So I just shared with the people that if they were having a moment, whether it was in my workshop or one of the other workshops, and they really enjoyed or appreciated what they were hearing, and they wanted that to hopefully be something that they could put into their life, that then intentionally create the frame.
Sit there in that moment, I'm doing it right now, open up your chest, do a little bit of that in through the nose, out through the mouth, breathing, and take it all in. Look at the people around you, feel yourself in that seat, where are you sitting in that room, and then just take in that moment, that memory, that experience, and create that relational frame. Who was saying it at the time? What were you feeling? What were you wearing?
What were those around you wearing and feeling and saying and thinking and smelling? And all of those things, because we can intentionally also create these positive moments with these positive intentions, again, being very intentional about it.
The reason why I bring that up is because where Chapter 4 in Buddha's Brain goes next is one of my favorite parts, and I feel like if you listen to the virtual couch for a little while, you'll hear some of the, what I want to now almost look at like the greatest hits or things that have been so important to me. Dick Hanson says, taking in the good. He quotes a Walt Whitman song, Song of the Open Road, I am larger, better than I thought. I did not know I held so much goodness.
Right away, there's a nice positive thought, positive memory, positive intention. But Rick says, much as your body is built from the foods you eat, your mind is built from the experiences that you have. The flow of experience gradually sculpts your brain, thus shaping your mind. Some of these results can be explicitly recalled, like this is what I did last summer, or this is how I felt when I was in love.
But most of the shaping of your mind remains forever unconscious, and this is called your implicit memory, and it includes your expectations, your models of relationships, your emotional tendencies and your general outlook. Implicit memory establishes the interior landscape of your mind, or what it feels like to be. Based on the slowly accumulating residue of lived experience. So why can't we then
start to create or help intentionally create our own residue of lived experience by creating one of these positive relational frames? And I think that will start to help us move from the I now know but I'm not doing the things that I really want to be doing more of from that difficult path of awakening into that stage three where he talks about okay then that is one where you You can now move into the, now I know and I'm doing more than I don't do on the path of becoming or just being.
So he said, in a sense, those residues can be sorted into two piles, those that benefit you and others and those that cause harm. To paraphrase, he says, to paraphrase the wise effort section of Buddhism's noble eightfold path you should create, persevere and increase beneficial implicit memories and then prevent, eliminate or decrease harmful ones. So let's create an intentional memory. Now this plays right into one of my other favorite parts about this chapter in particular
where he talks about the negativity bias of memory. He said, here's the problem though. Your brain preferentially scans for, registers, stores, recalls and reacts to unpleasant experiences. And like he says, your brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and it is like Teflon for positive ones.
So consequently, even when a positive experience outnumbers a negative one, the pile of implicit negative memories naturally grows faster, so the background feeling of what it feels, like to be you can start to become undeservedly glum and pessimistic.
And he said sure that negative experiences do have benefits, because loss opens up the heart, remorse can provide a moral compass, we've talked before about anxiety can alert you to threats, and anger can spotlight wrongs that should be righted, or feelings within sight of you that need to be addressed or dealt with. But he said, do you really think that you're not having enough negative experiences?
Pain with no benefit to you or others as pointless suffering, and that pain today starts to breed more pain tomorrow. For instance, he said even a single episode of major depression can reshape circuitry of the brain to make future episodes more likely, and that's from an evidence-based study back from 2007. But then again, he says the remedy is not to suppress negative experiences because when they happen, they happen. You have negative feelings, negative thoughts, experiences.
But rather, we need to be more intentional about fostering the positive experiences and in particular, take them in so they become a part of you. So he says, here is how you internalize the positive. Number one, turn positive facts into positive experiences. Part of what I was talking about earlier with this creating these positive relational frames. He said, good things do keep happening all around us, but much of the time we don't even notice them.
Even notice them. Even when we do, we often barely feel them. Somebody is nice to you, or you see an admirable quality in yourself, or you see a flower blooming, or you finish a difficult project, and it seems to just roll by. So instead, he said, actively look for good news, particularly in the little stuff of daily life. In the faces of children, in the smell of an orange, in a memory from a happy vacation, a minor success at work,
and so on. I think this is why keeping things like a gratitude journal actually has some data behind it that it can be a very positive experience, because you have to actively look for things that you are grateful for. Because if you even just write down one, two, three things a day that you have been grateful for and no repeats, then you are looking for more of the positive, are starting to internalize that positive.
It doesn't mean that the negative goes away, it's still going to be there, but you're starting to recognize more about the positive things in life. So he says, whatever positive facts you find, bring a mindful awareness to them, open up to them, let the calm affect you, let them sit, let the calm affect you. He said, it's like sitting down to a banquet. Don't just look at it.
He said, dig in, savor the experience. It's delicious. Make it last by staying with that moment, five, 10, even 20 seconds. Don't let your attention skitter off to something else because the longer that something is held in awareness and the more emotionally stimulating it is, the more neurons that fire and thus wire together and the stronger the trace in memory. He said, focus on your emotions, your bodily sensations, since these are the essence of implicit memory.
Let the experience fill your body and be as intense as possible. So for example, if somebody is good to you, let that feeling of being cared about bring warmth to your whole chest and sit with it and open up to it and expand and smile and be present and look, and feel and all those feelings. And then he says, pay particular attention to the rewarding aspects of the experience.
For example, how good it feels to get a great big hug from somebody that you love. Focusing on these rewards increases the dopamine release, which makes it easier to keep giving these experiences your attention, and they strengthen their. Neural associations and your implicit memory. You're not doing this to cling to the rewards which would eventually make you suffer, but rather to internalize them so that you carry
them inside of you and you don't need to reach to the outer world. You can also intensify an experience by deliberately enriching it. For example, if you are savoring a relationship experience, you could call up another feeling of being loved by others, which will stimulate oxytocin or this the cuddle or the bonding hormone and thus deepen your sense of connection or you can strengthen your feelings of satisfaction after completing a demanding project by thinking about some
of the challenges that you had to overcome. Sit with it, think about it, be in the moment but look for and internalize the positive experiences because you bet the negative ones are gonna be there too. He said imagine or feel that the experience is entering deeply into your mind and body like the sun's warmth into a t-shirt, water into a sponge or a jewel placed in a treasure your chest and your heart. Keep relaxing your body and absorbing the emotions, sensations,
and thoughts of the experience. Because these positive experiences, he says, can be also used to soothe, balance, even replace the negative ones. When two things are held in mind at the same time, they start to connect with each other. Again, that's where I go back to this relational frame concept. So that's one reason why talking about hard
things with someone who's supportive can be so healing. Painful feelings and memories get infused with the comfort, encouragement, and closeness you experience with another person, aka why therapy works. We'll wrap it up here, but I hope that you can look and just acknowledge or recognize that that pain, it really is going to happen. It's inevitable, those first start responses, but it is that suffering that is where we are starting to think, what is wrong with me? Why did this happen?
It never, it's not fair. It always happens. But then there are other people that you may be aware of that seem to have things or you might need to, you probably feel like they don't even have a lot of the the same struggles or trials, but I am here to tell you that as somebody that sits and talks with people on a daily basis and has done so for over 15 years, we all have problems, we do. And it really does become a lot of what do we do with them.
I'm not saying that they are all equal and of the same, because honestly, there are people that are going through some things that I would never want that you ever have to deal with.
And there's a phrase that I sometimes like, sometimes I think it's probably not doing much good or justice, but where people would say that if you put all of your problems in a bucket, I don't know if you've heard this one, and then solve the other people's problems, you would grab your own problems and bring them back and take those.
And sometimes I don't think that's necessarily the case, because I do, I know that there are some people that are going through just some incredibly difficult things now. And it's not to say that other people aren't, but there are times, a time and a season, where things are probably even more intense or even might feel like they are just absolutely unbearable. But as cliché as it sounds, it truly is just to breathe in through your nose,
out through your mouth, make it through every moment. And then as you make it through a moment, you will slowly but surely start to build this internal neural landscape, what it feels like to be you, your implicit memory. And it's going to be based off of this residue of lived experience.
And just know that as difficult as the experiences are that you're facing, that when you hit a certain point of acceptance, of knowing that things are going to happen, negative things are going to happen, positive things are going to happen. But ultimately you are in charge of your own ship, your own destiny. And that once you can really start to look at, okay, all these things, and it's a hindsight principle, but all these things can be for my good. What did I learn? What did that experience
bring me? How have I self-reflected? How have I internalized the experience? And not to then shut down, but to grow and to move forward and to let your light so shine so that others around you can lift their lights as well. And I feel like that does become part of then your implicit memory or what it feels like to be you. And that is where you really can make a pretty significant impact or effect on you. And then as you do that on those around you, which is that is really this feeling
or the sense of purpose. It's not this fleeting thing that you're chasing after, this feeling of euphoric, just good, but it is of being good and doing good and then feeling like what it feels like to be you is good. And I really feel like people can get to that point. So if you have questions, comments, feel free to send them at contact at tonyoverbay.com. Murder on the couch is the trailer has been released and I even put that out on the virtual couch podcast channel.
So actually it will have already been out by the time you get this, but please go follow that or or subscribe. Music. Distance don't explode allow the understanding through to heal the legs and heart. Music.